Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @05:32PM
from the timing-is-everything dept.

Endoflow2010 writes "Today Wal-Mart has added streaming video to their website. What better time to compete with Netflix, now that they have raised their prices? On Wal-Mart's website, the movies will be available the same day the DVDs go on sale in stores. Walmart.com general manager Steve Nave said the retailer is following its customers as they increasingly embrace digital movie rentals and purchases. 'We know customers are starting to shift their behavior, in terms of how they consume their media,' Nave said, adding, 'As as customers make that change, we don't want to lose that customer as they shift to digital.' Wal-Mart, long the nation's leading seller of DVDs, signaled its intent to double down on digital movie distribution in February 2010, when it spent a reported $100 million to acquire Vudu, a Silicon Valley start-up that was gradually being added to home entertainment devices."

1) Voddler has about 2500 movie titles, most of which aren't even new releases - lots of crappy direct to video. Vudu/Walmart and Netflix have 5-10x that, and Vudu has new releases.2) They are not even remotely like Spotify, they charge per title VOD for their movies, somewhere around US $3-4 per 24 hour rental. Same as everyone else.3) They aren't watchable on any TV or BD players like other services, which are available on almost every consumer device a

Its not. It costs $6 just to rent a single movie and their free movies are lame. So, for what it costs for netflix streaming, for 1 month, voddler will allow you 1.5 movies. And for netflix streaming and 1 DVD/Blue-ray, it is like 3 movies from voddler. I will stick with Netflix.

"Its not. It costs $6 just to rent a single movie and their free movies are lame. "

VUDU is the same. You can only rent movies to stream, unlike netflix where you pay once a month for all-you-can-eat. And VUDU has been around for 4 years. [techcrunch.com] Yes, FOUR, and it hasn't gone mainstream yet, while Netflix is everywhere.

Bandwidth caps should be taken away during those times when usage is low, similar to cell phone plans with free unlimited nights and weekends. Then you could schedule your movie downloads for the wee hours and watch them the next day.

They should invent something like... prestreaming. So like say I want to watch Harry Potter tonight. But I know he internet will be like busy. So I tell my TV to prestream it this morning so that when I go back to watch it tonight. It's like already there.

You could load it with down pipe. I think I just discovered my first patent!

Excellent! I think they should add another layer. Say like when I know what I want to watch 2-14 Buisiness days (M-F) from now, I could tell them and they'd send it to me on some type of disc and I could watch it whenever I got it and send it back when I was done.;)

Bandwidth caps should be taken away during those times when usage is low, similar to cell phone plans with free unlimited nights and weekends. Then you could schedule your movie downloads for the wee hours and watch them the next day.

That is just too fucking awesome: people want to time-shift streaming to make it cheaper, more efficient, and less painfully laggy. Don't get me wrong: it is a good idea. I sincerely like it. Who wants to stream when the network is at its busiest?

Then, next, all you need to do is have multiple recipients for each stream (no problem getting people to synchronous their receipt, since they're time-shifting anyway; this is a job for a computer!), so that you can reap the advantages of broadcast or multicast. For a popular TV show with n viewers, this would lead an an up-to-n-fold increase in efficiency on some segments of the network. For large values of n that is truly a no-brainer.

And then you will have invented something new and patent worthy. Call it "cable television combined with DVR." It would be awesome tech, similar to what people will be using in the year 2000.

For many years the movie selection at Wal-Mart has been all DVDs though I think they might have Blu-Rays too, now. I can't even remember when I last saw VHS tapes or anything like that. If Wal-Mart wants to follow customers "shifting to digital," the year 2000 is about the right time to announce it.

So.. two predictions: 1) In the year 2000 we'll have digital movies and high-performance efficient analog delivery systems. 2) 11 years later we

Oi, eu falo Portugese fluente (mais, de Brasil, nao de ai). I wanted to constructively say that the correct word is "designated". And also, that the root appears to be the same in both cases: "design"; it is something planned by a human, whether designing something (creating, drawing, etc); or designating something (classifying, demarcating, stating a time at which it will happen, etc).

I have a wife, 4 kids, and a netflix-enabled TV that we all use to watch streaming video. And my son in particular watches way too much youtube. We have never come even close to hitting the Comcast limit of 250 GB / mo.

Some of the netflix is HD, but it's true even that bitrate is much less than broadcast TV. Still it looks better than DVD. Sure, I hope they will raise or eliminate the cap as more HD content becomes available for streaming. But calling it "useless" today is hyperbole.

ISPs that are also cable companies (comcast, cox, twc, etc) will guarantee that streaming is "shit tier" third-class/steerage class video and the only way you can get actual HDTV (why else did you buy a flat panel tv?) is to buy into one of the cable "bundles." HDTV streaming will simply run into a cap by the end of the week and you'll be SOL for the rest of the month.

Because of this, the cable companies will retain their monopoly over HD content. This is by design. It is

I understand that concern, but I doubt they can pull it off. If a significant number of people start hitting the cap, there will be a lot of market pressure for higher caps (at least in areas with competitive markets), and legal pressure due to the obvious anti-competitive aspect. I wouldn't make a blanket statement that all caps are good or bad, it all depends on how restrictive they are. So long as most subscribers (90%+) aren't feeling a pinch, that seems reasonable for a fixed-price offering. I am

So walmart will team with Google and become an ISP. Then offer tiered network access where if you stream from them, it doesn't apply to your monthly cap.

You do realize that being an ISP requires access to the last mile? I don't think even the combination of Google / Walmart / Apple, the Vatican and Santa Claus can wire the entire planet. Or even the US.

Any idea if a similar service will be offered by Walmart Canada? While Netflix in Canada is currently priced at about half of the US price ($7.99 pm), the spectrum of movies and shows is pretty pathetic. I'd happily shell out $16 pm for what you guys in the U.S get. Of course I still subscribe in-spite of the crappy selection, since the documentaries are alright, and $8 pm = a few coffees!

Canada always gets left out of (or ripped off by) these buffet style streaming services (be it music, movies, or whatever) because no one wants to go through the hassle of negotiating licensing fees for such a small market.

And until that stops happening, just keep riding the bit torrent wave.

Canada always gets left out of (or ripped off by) these buffet style streaming services (be it music, movies, or whatever) because no one wants to go through the hassle of negotiating licensing fees for such a small market.

I thought you guys were already the clear by paying a small tax on your CD-R disks?

Canada always gets left out of (or ripped off by) these buffet style streaming services (be it music, movies, or whatever) because no one wants to go through the hassle of negotiating licensing fees for such a small market.

I thought you guys were already the clear by paying a small tax on your CD-R disks?

As I understand it, Walmart is unlikely to have a better selection. The reason Netflix's selection is so poor is that American companies have been pretty much giving away multi-year exclusive digital rights to the Canadian networks. So Netflix's and (eventually?) Walmart's broadcast competitors get to decide whether they can show the movies and television shows that they control. Can you guess what their decision is?

While that's a fair prediction, they might easily support Linux simply by choosing Flash over, say, Silverlight, or by using HTML5 video -- that'd get them iDevices without having to pay Apple a 30% cut. They certainly wouldn't do so out of a desire to support Linux, but there are other reasons to prefer these.

So, if you actually know what's going on, do you have technical details? Do they use Flash, Silverlight, HTML5, ActiveX? Did they completely roll their own?

I think it comes down to the server licensing of Adobe, vs. MS... probably got a sweet deal. There's also the fact that MS's streaming system is a bit better for load scaling than Adobe's, even if Google can make it work. I really home something more comes out in this space.

For the PC targeted systems, they're using Silverlight, with MS's streaming stack. For non-PC (mac/windows) devices, I wouldn't know. Most likely an MS licensed codec for that target system (MS does have streaming codecs for linux and other embedded platforms), so likely using them there too.

You can play the iTunes videos on your AppleTV. And Netflix & Vudu can be played on just about any networked TV or Blu Ray player sold in the last couple years, and a bunch of game consoles and set-top boxes...

sell more DVDs than anyone else for a bunch of reasons other than that they have the best DVDs available. The concept that content is king will be more important online than it is for stacking DVDs high and selling them cheap.

Exactly. If Walmart says "I want streaming new movies" you can bet your ass they WILL get new movies to stream, as Walmart can crush the sale of DVDs for any company they wish just by product placement. You walk into any Supercenter they have the new releases right by the checkout in kiosks for $10-$20 each so they can snatch the impulse buyers and in the electronics dept they have HUGE bins of movies for $3 and $5 for the frugal.

All Walmart will have to do to those that won't play ball is say "Fine, while

Today Wal-Mart has added streaming video to their website. What better time to compete with Netflix, now that they have raised their prices?

Netflix actually lowered the price customers pay to get the most comparable service to the Wal-Mart offering (streaming-only), as well as for disc-only service; the only people who saw price increases were those people who want both streaming and DVD delivery, which

No, they raised the price. Used to be you got discs for $8 and streaming was free. Then the two of them were $11, meaning streaming went up to $3. Now to get the same thing it costs you $16. They raised the price on streaming. If you were only streaming while you had the ability to get discs, too, then you were choosing to pay $11 for a streaming-only account. That's not what its price was, it was just what you decided to pay for it. Since their streaming has a limited selection and degraded quality

No, they raised the price. Used to be you got discs for $8 and streaming was free. Then the two of them were $11, meaning streaming went up to $3. Now to get the same thing it costs you $16. They raised the price on streaming.

No, streaming is still $8 (because there never was a way to get "just the streaming" without the DVDs). You just don't get the DVDs as of August if you change your plan to streaming-only.

Since their streaming has a limited selection and degraded quality (no 1080p, bad throughput issue

That's good to know it doesn't suck everywhere. I dropped streaming because of late, we never use it. Selection spotty and inconsistent, video utter crap on a 42" HTDV with horrid compression artifacts and unsynched audio. This on either a 3M down /.5 up DSL or a 10 M down / 1 M up Cable. For $2 / month it was worth keeping just for those occasional moments of sheer boredom when you wanted to watch something. For $8 a month, it just didn't add up. Perhaps if they pulled this stunt in a few years (aft

Which is most folks because the streaming library is a joke. Right now the discs only option is comparably priced to Blockbuster if you get the Bluray upgrade to Netflix. Plus Blockbuster includes PS3, Wii and Xbox360 game rentals in that price.

I've spent the last two days flat on my back with some kind of horrible food poisoning. Lacking a DVD player in the bedroom, I trolled Netflix streaming looking for something good. Not only was I sick, I was bored, too!

You can sometimes find art house / foreign titles of quality, but quite often its really schlocky B movies in the 2-3 star range. The "best" selection is often StarzPlay, but even then its a lot of older titles in heavy rotation on the various Starz & Encore cable channels.

I didn't make any statement about right or wrong. AT&T's change was, for most users, a price cut. It increased the price for heavy 3G data users, which is also a significant fact, but does not change the fact that the minimum cost of the data plan was reduced, and that the cost for most users was reduced

I know Wal-Mart sells censored versions of CDs. Will they be doing the same with the movies, or is there a reasonable expectation that the streaming movie will be the same as I would see in the theater or on Netflix?

I have purchased DVDs in the past that were censored. I knew this because I had seen the originals and the dub didn't match the lip movements, and a couple of scenes were missing. Upon inspection, it mentioned it on the box in very small print.

I don't buy CDs or DVDs from WalMart anymore for that very reason. It's just wrong to get a movie with all the bad language dubbed over, it takes a lot of the edge of out some movies. There are too many other places that only sell the originals at the same price f

Only is somewhat subjective, they made Nirvana relabel "Rape Me" to "Waif Me" for the CD release they carried and they refuse to carry and discs which have a content warning label on them. So, groups don't have to do it, but they're pretty much the biggest retailer of music these days so refusing to issue an acceptably edited disc is throwing a huge portion of the potential market away.

I now understand much better Celo Green's "Forget You"... (I consider it a work of art, even before knowing the Wal-Mart connection, simply because hearing the censored version on the radio, I sing the non-censored version to it, so it's somewhat viral.)

Lol, I had a friend back in the day who was too stupid to realize that Walmart sold edited CD's. Until we broke it too him, he honestly believed that NWA and Ice Cube albums all came from the studio with those bleeps. It earned him the nickname "Cheesy E" at school.

The streaming movies aren't censored. It's all just re-branding the existing Vudu service on Walmart's site, anyway.

Vudu did remove their adult content after Walmart bought them, but it hasn't affected any other movies - in fact, they have a lot of "unrated" cuts of R movies, as well. (Vudu does, I mean - I haven't tried Walmart's version).

Absolutely. We wouldn't want "dangerous" words heard by our perfect little children who never do any wrong and whom we need to shield and protect from everything even slightly uncomfortable or otherwise known as the "real world". You know, the one where everybody behaves, follows the letter of the law and never does anything wrong.

Seriously, I don't shop at Walmart, because I just don't believe in their business practices, their presumed moral authority over what I as a consumer can buy and the way they tre

Walmart had a habit (still do?) of editing songs on CDs it thought weren't family appropriate material. Are they doing the same with movies? Are Walmart movies like the airline version where cursing is badly overdubbed and the nude scenes are cut?

The MAFIAA standard plan to releasing content on the internet while maintaining control of the distribution chain:

1) Let a company license it for cheap. It's either an end-of-life service that lets them make a few more pennies on content that's long since been monetized, or should it for some reason take off, this will help build up demand.

2) Should it catch on, jack up the contract prices so that it doesn't undercut other media sales.

3) License the same content to a financially sound natural competitor of the company in #1, so that they can bleed company #1 of customers.

4) After company #1 has been sufficiently weakened, jack up the contract prices on company #2 and all further companies.

5) Profit. Internet distribution is handled through a number of smaller providers engaged in bitter competition, so they won't work together and they don't have the individual clout to dictate any of the terms of future contacts.

The MAFIAA learned their mistake from iTunes, where they waited until it was too late to try to stop Apple. And while they eventually got variable pricing, they still had to give Apple more control than they're comfortable with - it still makes them rage to this day. They aren't going to make the same mistake with films and TV shows: no single competitor will be allowed to get big enough to dictate contract terms. It will be the studios who make a profit and the studios who anyone has to go through to publish content; the role of the distributors is to distribute content as cheap as possible for the studios.

And thus we're on Step 3. WalMart is the competitor the studios are setting up to combat Netflix. When Netflix is sufficiently bled, WalMart will then have their contract prices increased just as Netflix had.

I would be leery of trying this tactic if I were the studios. At least with WalMart. WalMart has enough leverage in the retail business to destroy anyone who messes with them. WalMart could simply threaten to no longer carry the studios DVDs if they don't play ball and the studio would have to buckle, unless they wanted to lose 30-40% of their DVD sales.

And... this is a good thing? Walmart simply has gotten too big and has far too much power in the consumer market. In fact, Walmart's squeezing of suppliers just means better profit margins for Walmart, not better prices for consumers. Why does nobody get this?

I certainly didn't say that. I hate Wally World as much as the next guy, but just because you think the 800 lb. gorilla in the room is a dickhead is no reason to pretend he isn't there and then step on his toes!

I recently bought a Samsung TV. I really like it; one of the cool things about it is that I can play AVI and various other types of video\music files on the TV from a USB stick or external hard drive. As far as I can tell, there are no "protection" measures at all; it'll play whatever is on the drive (even some MKVs!). With Walmart getting into the content streaming game, what are the odds that media companies might start to lean on Walmart to push "protection" of digital content? Walmart's known for pu

I bought a Samsung TV recently too. Our first HDTV. (One of our non-HDTVs died and needed to be replaced.) I tried out the USB port last night using a spare USB thumb drive with some photos, MP3s and MPEG video files. It worked beautifully. That feature alone would make me more likely to buy a Samsung TV in the future when our non-HD, CRT television in the living room fails.

But will it play the HTC3.4 video codec? What about the the MP3.4 audio with embedded cued lyrics?

Neither of those exist yet, but the odds are good them or something similar to them will be invented in the 10+ years that you'll probably own your Samsung TV.

If you bought the best TV you could find and it happened to have this extra feature - great! You made a wise choice. But other people should be cautious about trying to mix computer functions into their television. By the best television you can find,

From the article, this is not an unlimited streaming service like Netflix or Hulu. This is a video-on-demand service like iTunes (and plethora other similar stores) where you have to pay for every item you download, either as a rental or a purchase. Yes, you can get titles the same day the are released on DVD -- for a $25 download price.

Several of the Wal-Mart's near me have RedBox machine's in their entrance lobby. I wonder if they are going to remove them to not compete with their online offering? I realize RedBox isn't streaming, but if I'm Wal-Mart, I will probably want to direct customers to purchase online from me, instead of giving up valuable revenue when those customers come to my store to purchase from my new competitor.

I doubt it. The reason being that in order to use those machines you'd have to visit those stores. At any rate, I doubt this detracts from their rentals anymore than the Redbox option detracts from their DVD sales in store.

It would be nice to see Wal-Mart push their weight around and lower streaming licensing costs. Netflix is reportedly going from around $180 million in licensing fees to $1.98 billion in licensing fees in 2012. If Wal-Mart could shatter the greedy content producers then not only Wal-Mart, but also other streaming providers like Netflix could possibly expand their streaming libraries and not have to hike subscrption plans in the process.

Does it make sense that you can get a physical DVD for $1, but to stream it you pay $5.99?

RedBox has costs including millions of discs, 10s of 1000s of kiosks, employees all over the country to physically drive and stock the machines.

Companies like Comcast and Netflix basically already have the infrastructure just sitting there to wipe out Blockbuster and RedBox and anybody else out if they offered $1 movies. Plus it seems like the % profits on $1 streamed movies would be way higher vs RedBox with it'

All these other companies seem to be missing why Netflix is doing as well as it is - it's business model is essentially an all you can eat buffet. Whereas Blockbuster and now Walmart are offering what's essentially a McDonald's value meal by comparison. What makes Netflix so likeable is being able to be an absolute glutton of video entertainment for as much as your bandwith holds out.

I like Netflix, but I watch movies on my computer and they don't offer streaming for Linux users. I seriously don't like Walmart to the point where I don't want to give them my business if I have an alternative.

Would anyone care to suggest a streaming movie alternative ( Linux friendly ) to Netflix that is comparable in selection and price?

I've looked, and there just isn't. And that's even ignoring your Linux compatibility requirement.

Personally, I get most of my TV via OTA broadcast and Tivo. I've already got a reminder to myself to cancel Netflix streaming in early Sept before the rate increase. The netflix streaming is the best in the industry by far, but haven't you noticed that it is still extremely limited in selection? I hardly ever use it.

I'm sure that lots of people won't care, and if Walmart can make the system simple enough for Walmart shoppers, it can succeed. However, Walmart is the company that forces artists to make CDs with the radio versions of their songs - because Walmart doesn't want us to hear the word "fuck" in something they sell.

Thank goodness, finally there is an online rental that is not 24hours only. With real lief my wife and I never get to finish a movie in one night anymore, 48 hours is in the right direction. But only some of the movies are priced this way on vudu. None of the films have captions/subtitles on vudu either, that's a real bonus for us. We watch the movies pretty quietly that we do to not wake the kids. Netflix is starting to have subtitles on more of it's streaming content, it's been great!

In general, probably not(certainly not on theatre or even DVD release day...) Selectively, in the attempt to assert power over a player they consider dangerous, quite possibly.

Consider the music case: once the labels realized that they had fucked up and let Apple get the upper hand, rather than the other way round, they cut some fairly sweetheart deals on pricing for Amazon in order to try to limit the power of the single middleman.

In the case of video, the pre-existing cable based VOD services mean t

Please stop calling each new wave of technology "switching to digital" -- practically everything is digital already; I know it's hard, but you'll just have to bite the bullet and get half a clue what you're talking about so you can describe it. In this particular case, "internet", "on-line", "streaming", and/or "not a big truck" may be useful.

Over the past few weeks I'd grown concerned that some horrific accident had decimated the ranks of overly-pedantic Slashdot users - I'm glad to find out you're okay!

He doesn't have a dash -- he has a hyphen. (Not that he needs a hyphen either.)

Also, what are you doin' with that apostrophe before "sayin"? Apostrophes are used to denote where you elided letters, so unless you meant "gsayin" rather than "saying", you're doing it wrong. (If you did mean "gsayin", you're doing something different wrong...)

Walmart actually has a pretty substantial datacenter back-end for doing logistics, supply chain, and stocking decisions stuff. They are a touch cagey about just how substantial.

More importantly, though, Walmart's vast physical distribution network makes it one of the major sellers of DVDs, which puts it in a helpful position when negotiating with studios over the price of streaming a given video a given number of times. With their clout in that area, they just have to not be worse than other CDNs(or, if